Experimental Sound Studio

Eleven composers and as many wines come together in the ESS garden for an evening to stimulate the senses. Curator Matt Griffin has asked composers from across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. to create pieces that will be paired with fine wines selected by Michael Malinsky of In Fine Spirits. We hope you can join us and toast the coming of autumn with wine and song!

The composers:

Tanner Menard has composed and curated experimental sound works and installations both for electronic media and orchestral ensembles for 20 years. In 2002, his world was permanently altered by his experience working with Naut Humon, the curator and then label owner of Recombinant Media Labs in San Francisco. There Menard discovered the aesthetic world of ambient, experimental, and minimal electronica. Tanner Menard’s music is released on Install Records, Archaic Horizon Net Label, Friendly Virus Net Label, Kafua Records and will soon be released on Experimedia, Mandorla, Tokyo Droning and Slow Flow Recordings. His orchestral music has been published by Loose Filter Music.

Eric Powell is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and audio
installation artist. His work has been heard across the Americas and
Europe. He spends his days making beer and his nights listening to
sounds.

Michael Vallera is a sound/visual artist based in Chicago Illinois. Using a combination of sources including field recordings and various instrumentation, his works are explorations of microtonal interactions and textures informed by the arenas of ambient sound, drone and experimental music. He is currently pursuing an MFA in sound at the Art Institute of Chicago.

[zygote] is a collaboration between Antti Sakari Saario (b. 1974, Lahti, Finland) and Martin Iddon (b. 1975, Manchester, UK). Antti Sakari Saario studied electroacoustic composition at the Universities of Keele and Birmingham with Jonty Harrison and Michael Vaughan. Martin Iddon studied composition and musicology at the Universities of Durham and Cambridge with Ian Cross (musicology) and Robin Holloway (composition). He has also studied composition privately with Chaya Czernowin and Steven Kazuo Takasugi. Currently, Saario and Iddon both lecture at Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, UK.

Max Alexander, musician, composer and Canadian, has been living and working in Chicago since 2007. He holds a BFA in Composition from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, and an MFA in Sound from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His works have been presented in such wonderful and far-flung places as Grand Rapids, Michigan, St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Takaka Hill, New Zealand.  He began drinking wine before he began composing electroacoustic music, and he remains better at the former.

Christy Matson is currently an Assistant Professor in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her studio practice typically incorporates textiles with sounds into interactive installations that sometimes, but not always, also involve headstands, fog machines or Van Halen. Recent exhibitions include, the 2009 NEXT fair with ThreeWalls, Heaven Gallery, Chicago, The Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago,  the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, The San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design and The San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art.  In 2006, Matson was an artist in residence at the Experimental Sound Studio.

Olivia Block is a contemporary composer and sound artist who combines field recordings, scored segments for acoustic instruments, and electronically generated sound. Her recorded work seeks to introduce and ultimately reconcile nature with artifice in the realms of music and sound. Block works with recorded media, chamber ensembles, video, and site specific sound installations. Block has created sound installations for public sites and exhibition spaces including the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the library at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, the Lincoln Conservatory Fern Room in Chicago, and at the “Echoes Through the Mountains” exhibit at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. In the September 2008 she joined the sound department faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Knut Aufermann, born 1972 in Hagen (Germany), studied chemistry, audio
engineering and sonic arts (MA Middlesex University). From 2002-2005 he was the
station manager of Resonance104.4fm in London, now he is active across Europe
as a musician, radio artist, organizer, curator, consultant and workshop leader.
Knut Aufermann plays improvised electronic music using various forms of audible
feedback. Together with Sarah Washington he runs the project Mobile Radio
investigating alternative means of radio production. Their works have been
broadcast in 12 countries on 28 different radio stations. He is a founder member of
the international Radia network of independent cultural radio stations.
http://knut.klingt.org
http://mobile-radio.net

Filipe Otondo studied acoustics in Chile where he started composing and performing music for experimental theater. In 1999 he moved to Denmark to do post-graduate studies in sound perception and studied composition privately with Anders Brødsgaard. In 2005 he pursued his composition studies at the University of York in England with Ambrose Field and Roger Marsh and obtained a PhD in 2008. His music has been performed in festivals across Europe, in North and South America, as well as in Australia. Has received awards and prizes in composition competitions in Italy, Switzerland and Brazil.

Toronto-based Nick Storring was born in Kitchener in 1981, and began Suzuki-Method cello training at the age of four. He still credits this early ears-first-style training with spurring on his interest in composition and improvisation. Active as a performer/ improviser and composition, he is also an avid collector, and sometime music journalist. He has been a member of unsettling quiet-rock group Picastro since 2005, with whom he recorded the group’s third record Whore Luck (released on Polyvinyl Record Co.) and toured in North America and Europe. Nick is also one third of electronics-heavy improv combo I Have Eaten The City and regularly plays in wayward cello duo The Knot, alongside soul vocalist Saidah Baba Talibah and roots-rock singer Erika Werry. His enthusiasm and eclecticism has also led him to collaborative encounters in concert with Daniel Johnston, Rhys Chatham, Malcolm Goldstein, Owen Pallett, Damo Suzuki, Laura Barrett, Eddie Prévost, and Diane Labrosse.

The wines:

·  Aveleda Vinho Verde - white - Portugal - light, zippy, effervescent - a good welcome wine 

·  Monte Palma Verdejo / Viura - white - Spain - citrus and minerals from the desert 

·  Schlink 2006 Dornfelder - red - Germany - light skinned red here this year thanks to global warming 

·  Vika Oak 2007 Malbec / Syrah - red - Argentina - ripe and smoky 

·  Kana 2006 Workingmans Red - Washington - zin, malbec, syrah - dark and minerally 

·  Gilbert 2006 Earth Series - Washington - carmenere, syrah, malbec, petit verdot - dark and brooding

·  Stafford Hill 2007 Riesling - Oregon - bone dry and sharp from a cold, cloudy vintage 

·  Schmitt 2008 Pinot Meunier Rose - Germany - super rare grape makes an appearance in a soft easy rose 

·  Les Trois Clochers 2007 Baujolais Villages - France - easy gentle fruit with just enough skin and spice 

·  Curatolo 06 Nero d’Avola - Sicily - Pinot Noir’s sicilian cousin with thick skins and color 

·  Yard Dog 06 Red - Australia - a high percentage of petit verdot makes this scream with dark, smoky violets